Eclipse Bay (Eclipse Bay #1)

. . . Member of the Inner Circle?

. . . Claims to be from Portland but spotted a copy of the New York Times on the backseat…

. . . Showed up for last Tuesday’s secret meeting at the institute. Probably on the inside…

“She’s crafted a fantasy world for herself,” Hannah whispered. “It’s amazing.”

“I’m not so sure it’s any more amazing than the fact that we’re sitting here going through her fantasy world logbooks because we think we can use them to solve an eight-year-old murder.”

“Okay, you’ve got a point.” Hannah tapped the pen against the table. “I can see where some people might conclude that we’re as far out in left field as Arizona herself.”

It took nearly half an hour to get through the log for the night of Kaitlin Sadler’s death. Hannah was privately on the verge of conceding defeat when Rafe paused at a license plate number.

“Huh,” he said.

She looked up quickly. “What?”

“We’ve been concentrating on plates and vehicles connected with the Thornley campaign.”

“So?”

Rafe sat back slowly and shoved his hands into his back pockets. He studied the open logbook. “None of them left and returned during that two-hour window. Maybe we’ve been coming at this from the wrong angle.”

Hannah did not like the dark excitement in his voice. “You think maybe whoever left to meet Kaitlin borrowed someone else’s car?”

“Maybe.” Rafe hesitated. “But there’s another possibility. From what we can figure out, Kaitlin was acting on impulse that night. She had made up her mind to leave town in the morning. She needed cash in a hurry. We’ve been going on the assumption that she tried to sell the blackmail tapes to someone from Thornley’s camp. But there was another potential market for those tapes.”

“What market is that?”

“The media.”

“Well, sure.” Hannah tossed aside the pen. “But why would anyone in the media murder her after agreeing to buy the incriminating tapes? The last thing a journalist would want to do is get rid of his source. He’d want backup for his story.”

“Not if,” Rafe said slowly, “he planned to use the tapes to blackmail Thornley himself.”

Hannah drew a breath and let it out carefully. “The news of Thornley’s interest in lingerie never appeared in the media. You think that’s because some journalist who attended the reception that night kept the tapes and has been using them to blackmail Thornley all these years?”

Without a word, Rafe took one hand out of his back pocket and rotated the logbook so that she could see the entry he had marked.

“Not some journalist,” he said quietly. “One Kaitlin knew well enough to call in a hurry that night. One she had reason to believe might be interested in handling a sleazy story about Thornley. An old acquaintance she thought she could trust.”

Hannah looked down at the name written next to a license number. Stunned, she glanced quickly at the notes she had been making. The vehicle had left the reception shortly after midnight. It had returned at one-forty-seven A.M.

“A journalist,” Rafe went on very quietly, “who might have known that Arizona Snow had a habit of hiding in the shadows to make notes about events at the institute. One who might have decided that even though no one in town ever paid any attention to A.Z.’s conspiracy theories, it would probably be a good idea to steal the log for that evening.”

A chill of disbelief numbed Hannah. “You think Kaitlin tried to sell the tapes to Jed Steadman?”

An hour later Hannah paused halfway across the sunroom to glare at Mitchell, Rafe, and Arizona. All three of them glowered back at her.

“What the heck are we supposed to do now?” she demanded. “The big idea was to take the evidence to Jed Steadman and let him run with the story. Now it looks like he’s the chief suspect.”

Arizona shook her head and made a tut-tut sound. “Should have guessed the local media were involved in covering up institute actions. Explains a hell of a lot, if you ask me. No wonder they’ve been able to maintain a cloak of secrecy over their activities up there.”

“If we’re right, this has nothing to do with the institute,” Hannah said with a patience she did not feel. “It’s a simple case of blackmail and murder. It looks like Kaitlin called Jed that night. He went to meet her on the path above Hidden Cove. Maybe she offered to cut him in on the blackmail deal. Or maybe she simply wanted to sell the tapes to him outright. Either way, he saw a golden opportunity to cash in on the compromising videos.”

“But he figured he’d better get rid of Kaitlin,” Mitchell said. “Probably didn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut. Or maybe he didn’t want to split the potential profits two ways.”

Rafe massaged the back of his neck. “The bottom line here is that we don’t have any hard evidence for any of this.”

“You got my logs,” Arizona reminded him.

“No offense, A.Z. , but we need more than that to take this to the police.”

“We’ve still got the option of turning the story over to the media,” Hannah reminded him. “Not the Eclipse Bay Journal, obviously. But maybe one of the Portland papers will be interested.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Rafe tapped his finger on the arm of the wicker chair. “I was counting on Jed going with the story and doing the basic legwork because it was a hometown scandal. He had the best reason to get excited about it.”

“He’ll get fired up about it, all right,” Mitchell said morosely. “Probably sue us.”

Hannah looked out over the bay. “I wish we had a little more to go on here. Rafe is right. We don’t have any hard evidence.”

There was a short, stark silence behind her.

“You know who you’re looking at now,” Mitchell said eventually. “If nothing else, you ought to be able to use what you’ve got to scare the hell out of Jed Steadman. Make sure he knows that if he makes one false move, a lot of folks will be watching. That should keep him in line.”

Arizona grunted. “Why not call up the Thornley crowd and tell them we know who’s been blackmailing their candidate all these years? That would stir things up a mite.”

“I’m not so sure Jed has been blackmailing Thornley,” Rafe said thoughtfully.

Everyone looked at him.